Many of my colleagues here think 3-way bucktailing for stripers in Plum Gut is fishing's max physical effort. Well on Friday, I discovered that Gut fishing is like a calm, Sunday afternoon lake fishing with a cane poll and a bobber compared to the offshore groundfishing expedition I went on. My friend with a boat in very Southern Maine called on Wednesday and said the Wind Gods decreed Friday to be the day. Since it's over 2 hours for me to drive down there, and he wanted to meet at his house @ 03:30, I found a hotel and crashed early on Thursday night to meet on time having some modicum of rest.
After loading the boat, we headed out for a 20+ nmi to the his offshore numbers. After a 1.5 hour trip, the engine was cut and we started fishing clams for haddock in 40+ fathoms with 14 oz of lead. Pretty soon we had fish on with a very nice pick. Only problem was it didn't take long at all, maybe a couple of minutes, before each of us hooked up, and cranking up 250 ft of line gets pretty old for these old bones. Then my buddy nailed a 12 lb pollock on the clams and since he had no interest in haddock, decided to throw on a 14 Norwegian jig with a dark cod fly. It didn't take long for him to bring in nice 5 lb pollock. At that point I had enough haddock so I rerigged with a jig. We then spent 4 hours of constant catching in 240 - 270 ft of water. To say it was exhausting is understatement. We caught pollock, haddock, cusk, cod, all released, and of course, dogfish and an odd sculpin.
We had high hopes of catching a halibut, as there have been very favorable reports and we thought I had hooked one when my rod doubled over with a fish that kept on diving for the bottom, taking out line and refusing to come up. After a good 10 minutes of this, the fish started to tire and come up, but far from the boat, which changed the thoughts of halibut to WTH is this fish.
Turns out I had snagged a 15 lb cod in the side with the cod fly. I was just shot, but dutifully kept dropping my jig down and reeling in fish until the Captain said, time to head back. Was way too tired to cut all the fish when I got home, but did fillet the 2 pollock I had for dinner Friday night, delish!!! Yesterday AM I cut fish for another 2 hours putting a good 10 lbs of haddock fillets in a zip loc, along with a couple of lbs of cusk fillets. Last night it was fried haddock, another delicious meal. Today I'll pull the vacuum sealer out and start putting fillets in the freezer.
After loading the boat, we headed out for a 20+ nmi to the his offshore numbers. After a 1.5 hour trip, the engine was cut and we started fishing clams for haddock in 40+ fathoms with 14 oz of lead. Pretty soon we had fish on with a very nice pick. Only problem was it didn't take long at all, maybe a couple of minutes, before each of us hooked up, and cranking up 250 ft of line gets pretty old for these old bones. Then my buddy nailed a 12 lb pollock on the clams and since he had no interest in haddock, decided to throw on a 14 Norwegian jig with a dark cod fly. It didn't take long for him to bring in nice 5 lb pollock. At that point I had enough haddock so I rerigged with a jig. We then spent 4 hours of constant catching in 240 - 270 ft of water. To say it was exhausting is understatement. We caught pollock, haddock, cusk, cod, all released, and of course, dogfish and an odd sculpin.
We had high hopes of catching a halibut, as there have been very favorable reports and we thought I had hooked one when my rod doubled over with a fish that kept on diving for the bottom, taking out line and refusing to come up. After a good 10 minutes of this, the fish started to tire and come up, but far from the boat, which changed the thoughts of halibut to WTH is this fish.
Turns out I had snagged a 15 lb cod in the side with the cod fly. I was just shot, but dutifully kept dropping my jig down and reeling in fish until the Captain said, time to head back. Was way too tired to cut all the fish when I got home, but did fillet the 2 pollock I had for dinner Friday night, delish!!! Yesterday AM I cut fish for another 2 hours putting a good 10 lbs of haddock fillets in a zip loc, along with a couple of lbs of cusk fillets. Last night it was fried haddock, another delicious meal. Today I'll pull the vacuum sealer out and start putting fillets in the freezer.
Last edited:
